My MSc and PhD students are working on a wide variety of problems studying homotopical algebraic structures that arise in low dimensional topology, algebraic geometry, quantum algebra, combinatorics and category theory.  For current MSc students at the University of Melbourne, the easiest way to contact me is before or after the Topology Seminar or to drop in to my office - Peter Hall G28a. For potential Ph.D. students, please email me with a CV and a copy of your MSc thesis and we can arrange a more formal chat. For full information about our graduate program see the "Study" page here.

Current Students:​

• Jinwen Xu is working on his PhD and is thinking about cyclotomic associators and motives. 
• Emrys Berg is working on his MSc and is thinking about using operads to study problems in deformation theory. 
• James Kelly is jointly supervised with Ian Gallagher. James is working on his MSc and is thinking about the potential for using Hodge theory in applied topology. 

Past Students: 

• Chandan Singh completed his Ph.D in early 2026. Chandan studied variations of the Grothendieck-Teichmüller group and genus zero Kashiwara-Vergne solutions. 
• Alice Rossiter completed her graduate diploma in mathematics in 2025 and is working toward a masters in mathematics education.
• Guozhen Wu completed his MSc in 2025 on tensor products of cyclic operads. 
• Kurt Stoeckl finished his Ph.D. in 2025. Kurt worked on developing a theory of Gröbner bases for prop(erad)s and wheeled props. 
• Olivia Borghi completed her Ph.D. in 2024. Olivia studied variations on symmetric monoidal infinity categories. 
• Tamara Hogan finished her MSc on planar algebras, knot invariants and the Kashiwara-Vergne conjecture under my supervision in 2019. She completed her Ph.D. thesis, titled "Topological Perspectives on Kashiwara-Vergne Theory" as a joint degree supervised by myself and Zsuzsanna Dancso at the University of Sydney, in 2024. Tamara is currently a postdoc at the University of Toronto. 
• Patrick Elliott finished his thesis titled "Homotopy coherent cyclic operads" in 2023.
• Michelle Strumila has finished her PhD thesis titled "Giving Daggers to Higher Cats: Generalised Quasi Operads, Astroidal Sets, and a Surface Operad" in 2020. Michelle is currently working at Monash University. 
• Santiago Nahuel Martinez finished his MSc in 2021. Santiago thought about the connection between dessin de enfant and higher genus mapping class groups. His project proposed a new graphical model for higher genus dessin. Santiago is now working in industry.  
• Ethan Armitage finished his Masters at Melbourne in 2018, "Profinite Completion of Modular Operads and an Infinity Cyclic Operad of Surfaces." Ethan won the Wilson Prize for his thesis and is currently pursing a Ph.D. at the University of British Colombia in Canada. 
• Musashi Koyama finished his Masters at Melbourne in 2017, "Applications of Cyclic Wiring Diagrams," and went on to a PhD at The Ohio State University. Musashi won the Nanson Prize for his thesis.
• Cole Hugelmeyer finished his Masters/Honors at UCLA in 2015 and went on to do his PhD at Princeton.